The revenge of the Reality-Based Community

Post Reply New Topic

For all the right-winger whining about the stupid people who voted for Obama:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... community/

Interesting article. Not quite sure how to think of it right after reading though, I need to think on it for a while.

"Epistemic Closure" - The condition of intellectual isolation where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction, and of having no clue that these ideas are considered both stupid and unpopular to outsiders. Ideological intolerance and self-misinformation as the products of relentlessly biased and consistently inaccurate analysis. Typical behavior includes, but is not limited to:

Blind hatred toward dissenting ideas.

Ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster organization.

Dismiss critics for being members of a "reality-based community", instead of "ideology-based community" (e.g., loyal party-liners).

I'm not surprised by this at all. I'm sure situations like this occurred on the left as well, epistemic closure is not just a phenomenon in the Republican Party. The man seemed sensible, but I disagree with him that Keynesian economics is what we need. Hayek's ideas are much more sound and require much less taxes.

What we're looking as right now, though, is a right wing shocked that it lost an election, and still saying that it was 'the fault of stupid, greedy, sheeple voters bamboozled by the 'leftwing' media.'

Honestly, I've been seeing this narrative from other major right-wing intellectuals:

So, Richard Posner has distanced himself from the right:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics ... nservative
""I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy," he said."

He's a lawyer who was foundational to the law and econ movement and very heavily associated with the University of Chicago econ department.

Francis Fukuyama, a foreign policy expert and a significant figure in neoconservatism, has broken ties with a large segment of the modern right:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2 ... story.html
"That break with the neoconservative clan had a very specific genesis. At an annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute in February 2004, Fukuyama sat listening first to a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney and then the columnist Charles Krauthammer, who declared a “unipolar era” had begun, which, of course, the U.S. would lead. “All of these people around me were cheering wildly,” Fukuyama remembers. But in his view, Iraq was fast becoming a blunder. “All of my friends had taken leave of reality.”"

And frankly, y'know, just being educated will tell you of the various areas where conservatives are screwing up intellectually.

Conservatives are in denial of science, specifically they deny both evolution and climate change, both of which are pretty well established in their respective scientific communities. To any non-scientist, a general consensus on a position is the gold standard. Once scientists have finally agreed to something, then you know it was very likely to have had to pass a lot of tests.

Conservatives have stupid positions on abortion. It's not a baby at the moment that the sperm enters the egg. The idea is pretty ludicrous, as if somebody had *never* heard of identical twins. Also, because it's not really substantive: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db ... 2799#comic And frankly, it just ends up being ridiculous when it comes down to y'know, how nothing person-y exists at that point, and how it's not even a necessary cut-off point, but rather a modern contrivance to oppose abortion. Many religions have not accepted that "life at conception line". Christianity hasn't always taken that line, but for large parts of the history accepted views based upon Aristotle. And a position based primarily upon one religion's special take isn't that special.

Conservatives are basically in the thrall of fundamentalism, and fundamentalism is pretty much an anti-intellectual movement. It's a movement based upon the denial of many basic elements of the reality, even of the scriptures these figures speak of. And this movement, which is only one religion in a society of multiple religions, basically has a lot of social views it seeks to shove down everybody's throat. The problem is that this shoving isn't really valid. There isn't much good reasoning that isn't just a form of shoving. And this shoving does harm real people.

Conservatives just have no conception of how to run foreign policy. We're in a world where the US is the biggest spender on the military by far, where conventional military foes no longer exist for us, and where invasion and nation-building have tended to not work that well. And yet as a party, they are the party of spending more of our money on this kind of BS, the BS that really doesn't work.

Conservatives have no idea about how to run the economy. As Bruce Bartlett points out, conservatives have no ideological purity. They're simply out for power, and the policies they promote don't have any real coherence. They don't understand the workings of a central bank. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/1 ... 27829.html That's Rick Perry, but you gotta know that what he's saying resonated with some people. Their goal of tax cuts for the rich don't do a lot of good for the economy, it's not as if they can say these tax cuts justify themselves, they don't! It doesn't spur on higher growth, because it's not the central issue. And conservatives have in recent years simply run up the deficit a lot. And... well, if we're going to have people run up the deficit a lot, then we may as well get fancy welfare programs rather than tax cuts for the richest 1% or 10% or whatever.